Educating Teachers: On Becoming a Student Again at the Summer Institute for Clinical Teaching

Posted on June 26, 2009 by blissgsu

I have just returned from Washington, D.C., where I spent the last week fully immersed in clinical teaching methods at the second Summer Institute for Clinical Teaching at Georgetown University Law Center. There were approximately 25 attendees, many with years of teaching experience, who came from all over the country to engage in four days of intensive learning.

One aspect of the experience that will help me the most as a teacher was putting myself back into the role of being a student.  I noticed how I felt as a learner.  As a student, I paid attention to my thoughts.  I tried to stay in my “role” but also stepped out a bit to think about the Wizard of Oz “man behind the curtain”  and why certain levers were being pulled at particular times.  Which was the point. 

“What are we doing next?”  “Are we going to get a copy of these Powerpoints?” “Do I understand the instructions for this exercise?”  The whole institute is a model for good teaching, so we were talking about techniques and experiencing their effect at the same time.   It was valuable to be a student again, and to have the space to think carefully about what kind of teaching results in learning that students can apply in other contexts.

We spent a day working with nationally recognized educator Grant Wiggins, co-author with Jay McTighe of  “Schooling by Design:  Mission, Action and Achievement.”  We studied and practiced “Backward Design,” following Wiggins and McTighe’s specific process, Understanding by Design, which is a way of thinking purposefully about curricular planning.

Planning for a class is done “backward” from the desired results.  A teacher first establishes the mission or goals of her class.  What understandings or knowledge and skill should students gain from the class?  What results are desired?  Defining mission is one of the three “M” questions that Best Practices addresses:  What is your Mission, What Method will you use, and How will you Measure results?

After defining mission, the next stage of Understanding by Design is determining the kind of evidence that will establish that the desired results have occurred.   After a teacher has carefully considered the first two stages, she can begin to develop a learning plan that will result in achievement of the desired results. 

While it is certainly easier to look at the casebook table of contents and plan a course around the topics as organized by the author, Wiggins notes that this kind of teaching may result in aimless activity, and that we should be organizing our teaching not around topics but around outcomes.

It was illuminating to be in the shoes of a student for a while, and share the experience with a group of enthusiastic learners.     It will definitely shape how I teach going forward.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 2 Comments »

Ideas from the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning Conference

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Mary Lynch

“Implementing Best Practices & Educating Lawyers:  Teaching Skills and Professionalism Across the Curriculum (POST 1)

Two  Favorite Teaching Techniques:  The Letter Exercise & Hess’s 3R’s”.

Here I am at Gonzaga U, in beautiful Spokane, Washington amidst a group of over 100 thoughtful and experienced law teachers and administrators who truly care about teaching, have studied what works and are committed to sharing that knowledge.  For those of you who can’t be here with me, I will blog about some of the major highlights over the next two days.   

Directors of the Institute, Professors Michael Schwartz and Gerry Hess, started the conference with  two quick favorite teaching techniques for introducing and emphasizing professional identity issues in the first year.  Professor Schwartz observed that there comes a time in the first semester of first year when 1Ls start to lose the big picture and are getting “grade crazy” and tense.  At this point in the semester, Professor Schwartz engages in THE LETTER EXERCISE in which he asks students to write a letter to themselves a few years down the road describing characteristics in the profession for which they would want to be known.  The students are then able to engage in a continual assessment of  their own goals and professional development.  After graduation,  Professor Shwartz mails students their letters.

 Professor Gerry Hess uses “The 3Rs:  Respect, Responsibility and Reputation” as a theme throughout the semester in his first year Civil Procedure course as a way to have students integrate professional identity development as they are learning a particular area of the law.  In addition to identifying the substantive doctrine in a case, students identify any issues in the assigned cases which touch on any of the 3Rs.

 For information about design and delivery of courses that focus on teaching professional skills and values, see Gerst & Hess, 43 Valporaiso U. Law Rev. 513 ( 2009).   Next post will be about 10 Interactive Instructional Strategies!!!

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Collaboration Experiment: Letting the Students Teach

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Deborah Kearns

In response to several inquiries of Albany Law School’s Family Violence Litigation Clinic students concerning tax issues related to separation and divorce, we decided to engage in an experiment that turned out to be a huge success.   The Low Income Taxpayer Clinic (”LITC”) and Family Violence Litigation Clinic (”FVLC”) students were asked to prepare and present an interactive class to share the knowledge that they had gained throughout the semester in a manner targeted to the unique issues faced by each Clinic. We followed a Best Practices approach of integrating substantive doctrine, skills, theory and social science all in one class and the feedback from the students was very positive.

In preparation for the class, the LITC students were asked to collaborate, research and prepare a presentation on tax issues that most commonly affect survivors of domestic violence.  The FVLC clinic students were asked to collaborate, research and prepare a presentation on the challenges faced by survivors of domestic violence.  The goals of the exercise were (i) to provide an environment for the students to collaborate, (ii) to give the students an opportunity to exercise their public speaking muscles, (iii) to provide a forum to express what they had learned throughout the semester and (iv) to cross pollinate.  

During the first hour of class, the LITC students discussed issues such as filing status, dependent exemptions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Innocent Spouse Relief and entitlement to refunds.    The FVLC students asked questions of the LITC students that were targeted and practical, which required the LITC students to apply doctrinal tax rules to practical questions in a concise and expeditious manner in front of a room of their colleagues.  Throughout the second hour of class, the FVLC students presented a Power Point presentation entitled Domestic Abuse and Financial Abuse for Tax Professionals.   The FVLC students explained various domestic violence issues as they might arise in family law, such as custody, child support orders of protection and financial abuse.   Of particular relevance to the LITC students, the FVLC students discussed financial abuse and explained how to recognize when a client is being abused.   

If you ask the students, it was the best class of the semester and they snicker because they taught it.  Little do they know, by encouraging collaboration we taught them a thing or two as well.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Teaching Methodology | 1 Comment »

Best Practices and Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor: the Importance/Impact of Experience & Intercultural Knowledge

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Mary Lynch

As the right and the left examine and attack President Obama’s nominee,  Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, we should take a look at her from a “Best Practices” perspective.   Although the focus of Best Practices is the legal academy, its values transfer well to consideration of a Supreme Court nominee.

I posit that Sotomayor is a Best Practices kind of nominee.  Why? 

1) REAL LAWYER EXPERIENCE  –  Best Practices highlights not just experiential learning but the importance of valuing the lessons of experience. In Sotomayor’s case, she has vast experience on the bench — as her supporters remind us repeatedly, she  “would bring more federal judicial experience than any justice in over 100 years.”  More importantly, from a Best Practices perspective,  she brings real experience as a trial lawyer in the nitty gritty work of serving as an assistant district attorney in one of the busiest courts in the U.S.  where common folks from diverse backgrounds flow through as victims, witnesses, law enforcement actors, experts,  jurors, court staff and community representatives.    

2) REPRESENTING CLIENTS – From what  I can tell, Sotomayor  does have experience representing clients on intellectual property clients in a private firm setting.   I do not know whether her work included a range of clients from all walks of life.  If it did, so much the better.  Best Practices reminds us how absurd it is that in most settings one can  graduate with three years of law school under one’s belt without ever having represented a real flesh and blood client.  Best Practice calls for more opportunities for law students to obtain early experience with clients and the problems of practice so they understand what happens when abstract notions meet the context of an actual client.  Similarly, wouldn’t it help to have supreme court judges who have experienced what happens to real clients in real cases?  For example,  it is very telling to watch the path from client’s mouth to appellate record?  Isn’t it an advantage, to know how a clients’ story can get mangled, distorted, enhanced, trivialized or diluted by the vagaries and procedures of the lower court process which determines the record provided for US Supreme Court consideration.  Such experience, as in the case of the renowned Justice Brennan,  adds a dimension to the reading of a trial transcript and a glimpse into the stories behind the typed narratives. 

3) “INTERCULTURAL KNOWLEDGE” & THE SUPREME COURT -  Chapter 2 of Best Practices asserts that law schools should have a programmatic goal of helping students “acquire the attributes of effective, responsible lawyers” including demonstrating “sensitivity and effectiveness with diverse clients and colleagues.”  (For more discussion about this issue, see 2008 Blog Posts below by New Mexico Professor Antoinette Sedillo Lopez and “Emerging Directions in Clinical Education” in which she “eschews” the term “cultural competence” in favor of intercultural knowledge and communication.   http://law.wustl.edu/Journal/28/Lopezbookpages.pdf )

Best Practices states:

One way in which law schools can enhance their students’ abilities to deal sensitively and effectively with diverse groups of clients and colleagues is by serving as a model for promoting diversity in law practice and community, including having in the law school community a critical mass of students, faculty, and staff from minority groups that have traditionally been the victims of discrimination. As students progress through law school, they identify and analyze their conscious and subconscious biases regarding race, culture, social status, wealth, and poverty through discourse with their teachers and fellow students. They test their own perceptions against those of their peers and teachers. If the law school community is racially, culturally, and socio-economically diverse, students develop better understandings of the ways in which race and culture can affect clients’ and lawyers’ world views and influence their objectives and decisions.260 

 Interestingly, this language is similar to the observations made by former and current Supreme Court Justices and Court scholars in today’s New York Times, Week in Review, page 1 article “The Waves Minority Judges Always Make.”  The article notes that even the most conservative justices acknowledge that Thurgood Marshall’s “very presence exerted a gravitational pull more powerful than his single vote.”  Thus, Sotomayor’s presence, conversation during deliberations, and experiential insights should bring a fresh perspective to the court and provide a more informed backdrop for eventual majority opinions and dissents. 

 What say you about my musings?

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »

Roy Stuckey Weighs in on Clinicians’ Job Security

Posted on May 26, 2009 by cbgrose
The debate about job security and status has been with us continually for over 30 years, and it will be with us for many years to come.  There is no most correct answer.  I can agree with almost everything that has been written in this [clinic list serv] stream.  The most important issue, however, is … who makes decisions about the educational goals of the curriculum and which courses will be offered?  If you cannot influence curriculum decisions, you have no power to implement or shape the reforms that are needed.
 
The debate about job security and status, however, should not be suspended.  It is important for all members of a law faculty to have equivalent job security and academic freedom.  During my career, I had everything from none to total job security.  At first, it did not seem important, but I came to realize that it really mattered whether I had equivalent job security and academic freedom to other members of the faculty.  Until I acquired that, my career was at risk (and it frequently was) and I was potentially a pawn for those with more power and job security than I had.  I survived.  Many in my situation did not.  If everyone on the faculty has one year contracts, that’s fine.  If everyone has a fair opportunity to achieve lifetime tenure, that’s fine, too.  But it is not fine for one group to have lifetime security and others to be on year to year contracts (unless, I would concede, there is an exceptionally good reason to have a very limited number of people on truely temporary year to year contracts).  By the way, my preferred form of job security for everyone would be renewable long term contracts.
 
I am beginning to wonder whether it is useful to continue to refer to ourselves as “clinicians.”  In the early days of efforts to increase the influence and security of clinical teachers, the question came up:  how do we tell if someone is really a clinician?  The answer at that time was that if anyone was willing to self-identify themselves publicly as a clinician, they must be one.  Today, I would be hard-pressed to draft a definition of a clinician.  Wouldn’t you?  I think I’m correct to say that the Best Practices book neither speaks of law school faculty as clinicians or professors, but rather as “law teachers.”  I think all law teachers should be using similar approaches to educating students, but with different emphases depending on the specific goals of our courses.
 
In closing, doesn’t setting a goal of having all students graduate with at least one “clinical course” miss the message of Carnegie and Best Practices about where law schools should be going (although in some contexts that might be the most achievable first step)?
 
Roy

Filed under: Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »

The Future of Family Law Education

Posted on May 25, 2009 by cbgrose

A family law education conference with topics and demonstrations to enliven your teaching.

Friday, June 26-7, 2009 / William Mitchell College of Law / St. Paul, Minnesota

Register Today!

The Family Law Education Reform Project began a national effort to more closely align family law teaching with family law practice. This conference offers the opportunity for professors and practitioners to explore the latest developments in family law education. To register and for more information, visit the conference website at: http://www.wmitchell.edu/family-law/conference/ . 

Ideas to Share?

 Do you have teaching ideas to share at the conference? Contact Nancy Ver Steegh at nancy.versteegh@wmitchell.edu. Please also visit the Family Law Education Reform Project website to download family law teaching materials http://www.flerproject.org/ .

Sponsored by:

The Midwest Family Law Consortium

Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis

University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law

William Mitchell College of Law

Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Minnesota Chapter

Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Minnesota Chapter

Hofstra University School of Law, Center for Children, Families, and the Law

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Denver to Host Conference on Assessment Next Fall

Posted on May 21, 2009 by cbgrose

I am pleased to announce that the University of Denver will be hosting a conference in September focused on Assessment in Legal Education.  Here is the opening paragraph for the request for proposals.  Check out the RFP and Conference program at:

 http://law.du.edu/index.php/assessment-conference

 The University of Denver, Sturm College of Law requests proposals to participate in a working conference on assessment in legal education.  This conference is intended to respond to the calls for better methods of assessment made in the Carnegie Report, Sullivan, et al., EDUCATING LAWYERS:  PREPARATION FOR THE PROFESSION OF LAW (2007) and affirmed in Stuckey et al., BEST PRACTICES FOR LEGAL EDUCATION (2007).  It also seeks to help those who have begun to engage in institutional assessment and to help illuminate the intersection of curricular reform with assessment methodologies.

Our principal goal is to help participants develop and/or expand law school assessment projects anywhere along the spectrum from assessment of student work to program and institutional assessment efforts.  Consequently, while participants in the conference will gain a sense of what law schools and individual professors are already doing in terms of improving assessment, participants? primary benefit will be the opportunity to develop their own assessment innovations or refinements as they share and explore those ideas in facilitated groups.  Conference participants will be discussing and drafting assessment-related documents in workshops.  They will be able to return to their home institutions with their own, and others?, assessment tools which they can use in their classes and share with their colleagues and Deans.

Please write to me or Mike Schwartz (co-chair of the conference) if you have questions about the conference or the request for proposals.

Thank you,

 David I. C. Thomson

LP Professor and Director

Lawyering Process Program

Sturm College of Law

University of Denver

2255 East Evans Avenue

Denver, Colorado 80208

www.ssrn.com/author=721919

www.law.du.edu/thomson

Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Links, Upcoming Events | Leave a Comment »

An Experiment in Outcomes-Based Education at one Law School

Posted on May 18, 2009 by cbgrose

What follows are excerpts from a report presented to the William Mitchell faculty and administration, prepared by the “Future of Legal Education Task Force,” of which I am a member.  It’s exciting stuff.  We’ll see where it goes . . .

“William Mitchell’s Future of Legal Education Task Force began meeting during the fall of 2008 to identify issues and proposals for consideration by the faculty.  Members surveyed and discussed literature on educational trends and deliberated about how Mitchell might pioneer the next generation of innovations in legal education.   

The Task Force paid particular attention to the Carnegie Report, Best Practices, and the ABA Report which challenge law schools to substantially reform their programs. The reports urge law schools to: (1) identify knowledge, skills, and professional attributes that graduates should possess (outcomes); (2) design curriculum based on them; (3) communicate educational outcomes to students; (4) provide feedback on student progress; and (5) validly measure student proficiency with respect to the outcomes. The reports encourage law schools to evaluate their programs based on demonstrated student learning.   

They embrace the practice of outcomes-based education — urging law schools to focus on “output” (what students ultimately know and can do) and rely less on “input” (what students are taught).  In fact, in a remarkable policy shift, the ABA Report recommends that output measures substantially replace input measures for the purpose of law school accreditation. Consequently, Task Force members discussed questions such as: What do we mean by “the practical wisdom to put the law to work”?  What evidence demonstrates achievement of practical wisdom? How should practical wisdom be taught?    

In fleshing out these questions, Task Force members used a four-step structure for curriculum design and review developed by K-12   scholars, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. (Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design (2008))  They define this system, which they call “backward design,” as follows:  First, desired measurable results are identified (outcomes). Second, evidence of student proficiency is identified (assessment). Third, teaching methods and materials are developed. Finally, the success of the educational program or course is evaluated. This blueprint may be used to comprehensively design or review an entire curriculum or it can be used with respect to an individual course.

In an effort to make discussion of outcomes more concrete, Task Force members considered various compilations of knowledge, skills, and professional attributes that a lawyer should possess. The formulation found in the MacCrate Report is one of the most useful. Based in large measure on MacCrate, the Task Force hypothesized the following potential outcomes for William Mitchell graduates.

“Practical wisdom to put the law to work” means that:

Graduates have basic legal knowledge.

  • Core subject matter
  • Legal systems, process, sources of law

Graduates are proficient in the skills of analysis, research, communication, and representation.

  • Analysis & reasoning
  • Legal & factual research
  •  Communication (listening, oral, written)
  • Representation (problem-solving, strategic planning, counseling, negotiation, advocacy)
  • Organization and management of work

Graduates conduct themselves professionally and exercise judgment in use of knowledge and skills.

  • Ethics
  • Service
  • Justice

 Adoption and assessment of measureable educational outcomes could provide a useful framework for addressing frequently mentioned issues such as the need for early targeted feedback and remediation for students who do not meet identified benchmarks, clearer sequencing of law school curriculum including more effective use of the second year, poor bar passage rates in the lowest quintile, lack of student preparedness for practice, and lack of clarity about Mitchell’s brand of legal education. Greater transparency and accountability could lead to deeper understanding about students who do not succeed (were these students admitted in error or is it possible that our educational program was insufficient?) as well as yielding valuable information about effective teaching and learning.

If used across the curriculum at Mitchell, an outcomes-based approach has the potential to: (1) assure that graduates have assessed proficiency in identified areas; (2) allow students to progress through the curriculum based on achievement levels; (3) make the steps to “practical wisdom” transparent; and (4) promote program and faculty accountability.

The Task Force chose not to delve deeper into the implications of outcomes-based legal education until issues identified in this report could be explored by the faculty. However, topics for future discussion include how delivery of instruction (teaching methods, faculty structure, and use of technology and resources) might change and how the resulting educational program and individual faculty members might be evaluated.

While these and other related questions are debated, various pilot projects might yield helpful information.  For example, outcomes-based instruction could be implemented in a few existing courses or a committee could undertake curriculum mapping based on proposed educational outcomes.”

I for one am going to keep teaching clinic the way I always have (because we clinicians are always working backwards), but I’m also planning to teach Trusts and Estates next spring paying particular attention to this Outcomes-based stuff.  Stay tuned . . . .

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THE ROLE OF CRITICAL THEORY SCHOLARSHIP IN BEST PRACTICES

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Mary Lynch

As law schools and law faculty engage in legal education reform, the question arises: What is the role of critical theory or theory-critique?    Some of our friends and colleagues in the critical race, feminist, post-feminist and other theory-critique schools may feel left out of the dialogue/teaching initiatives when,  in fact, such “theory-critique” skills are an important part of effective lawyering. 

Here at Albany, at a recent faculty luncheon conversation on Best Practice initiatives, one colleague noted that Brown v. Board didn’t just happen because of excellent “skills”  but because of a critical theory critique of the existing legal framework.  At first , I didn’t understand my colleague’s comment. It seemed intuitive to me that excellent lawyering requires the ability not only to manipulate and creatively work within an existing framework, but to  learn about and imagine  possible alternate frameworks, perhaps even advocate for their adoption.  However, as we engaged in good conversation, I realized that within law schools we often use shorthands to categorize courses which have become detrimental to communication.  What is a “Skills” or “Procedure” or “Substantive Law” or  ”Theory” course?  Good lawyering demands that one address skill, theory, substantive and procedural law ,and professionalism as an integrated whole not as easily separated building blocks, “tasks” or component parts. 

Particularly when it comes to the history of clinical legal education and the effect that clinic cases and legal work has had on the U.S. legal system, it is clear that students and professors who worked collaboratively to integrate theory, substantive and procedural law, politics, current events, and exceptional skills forged new pathways just as in Brown.   I think of  the Gitmo cases, the immigration cases, the environmental cases, the violence against women cases and others.  (My apologies to my non-US colleagues for not knowing the good work done by your clinics in your countries).   In my own clinical teaching experience , I know that my students have benefitted from my collaboration with critical theory colleagues.  For example, a feminist theory colleague , Professor Donna Young, challenged my students on criminal law theories of agency, self defense, guilt and innocence in the context of violence against women.  From this, the students imagined some new ways to work on gubernatorial clemency petitions which resulted in the first battered women clemency in New York State.

So what does the Best Practice text have to say about all this? First of all, most of Best Practices applies to courses independent of their substantive, theory or skills focus.  For example, articulating teaching and learning objectives for students is as important in a theory class as in any other course.  Second, Best Practices includes a range of statements for “outcomes.”  I think Rogelio Lasso’s description quoted on page 52 includes good language about one of the  “competencies” that good lawyers possess

“….3. Perspective  which is the ability to consider the historical, political, ethical and moral aspects of a legal problem and its possible solutions.” 

It seems to me that “Pure Theory” (non-doctrinal) courses are a great way for students to learn perspective . When taught in a manner which requires students to apply new “perspective” to problem or “real lawyer” situations, teachers can assess better whether students have truly absorbed knowledge so to be able to apply it — ie, have truly “learned.”   Best Practices quotes the NYU Review of Law and Social Change (see page 99 and footnote 281):

” Legal education needs to be broad-ranging in its approaches to the analysis of doctrine as well as in its approaches to other tasks like counseling….. We therefore seek to develop a range of intellectual capacities and to teach students to integrate the use of those capactities across the various categories of legal work. “

Although Best Practices doesn’t deny the importance of purely theoretical courses, my colleague is correct that it does not explicity advocate for the importance of purely theoretical courses in law school.  Perhaps it is time to create some more linkages and conversation between critical theory folks and Best Practices advocates.

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »

AALS Steps Forward on Best Practices, Carnegie and LEARN Recommendations

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Mary Lynch

The AALS’s Standing Committee on Curriculum Issues sent an e-mail to law school deans and others last Friday requesting information about “ways in which law teachers are enriching their classroom teaching by bringing in background materials that go beyond the judicial opinion.”  Noting that the e-mails need not be elaborate and just a paragraph or two would suffice, the Committee provides examples of the kinds of information desired: “the use of transcripts, documents, briefs, published narratives about a case being studied, video materials, interviews with parties and/or lawyers, among other materials.”  

The Committee will use the e-mails to collect “aggregate information” and to identify “some teachers for follow up conversations.”  E-mails should be sent by May 15, 2009 to:  akhair@aals.org. 

It is very encouraging to know that this information is being collected with an eye to aggregating it and disseminating it to law schools.   Best Practices and Carnegie (above at Resources tab) both note the need for the legal academy to support and provide resources for law teachers to transition into new types of teaching which better meet learning goals. Both documents also encourage law teachers to learn from each other.  Best Practices specifically suggests the creation of “Learning Centers” within law schools to assist faculty with teaching modification, experimentation and assessment of learning , see Chapter 4, subdivision J. The LEARN report which came out just last month (also at Resource Tab above) announced  the intention to “seek[s] support for creation of resources and employment of coordinators to help law schools, individual law teachers,and experts in other fields (such as learning theory and student assessment) make connections among themselves and learn from each other.” 

Over and over again in panel discussions and conferences, participants ask for casebooks, materials, syllabi and examples.  Here, at this Blog, in the work of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, and in other forums many participants in the Learning movement have attempted to provide more opportunity for cross-fertilization and support.  There is still much, much more to do.

The material and information requested from the AALS is a modest and limited step.  It does not request information about experiential learning opportunities, address issues of professional identity and purpose or focus on the most significant deficit in legal education – the limited opportunities for structured and faculty supervision of students beginning to  represent real clients.  However, this information collection is a non-threatening way to begin the information collection and to move the discourse and the cross-fertilization forward.  I look forward to hearing the results and sharing them on this Blog.

Filed under: Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »

Externship Collaborations

Posted on April 15, 2009 by dmaranville

Cost is often cited as an obstacle to providing real experiential learning opportunities.  Overcoming those cost barriers will require creativity.  That’s one reason I’m so excited about an experiment coming out of  the Washington state Access to Justice Board’s ATJ & the Law Schools Committee.  Next fall three legal services providers will collaborate with the three Washington Law Schools on the Rubin Externship Advocacy Project ,  a full-time externship during the fall term.  The externship will be supported by an intensive jointly developed classroom component in which attorneys from the three legal services providers, as well as faculty from the three law schools will participate.  Can it be a model for additional collaborative efforts?  We’ll see.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum | Leave a Comment »

Play, Creativity, Improvisation

Posted on April 10, 2009 by dmaranville

Why are  play, improvisation, and creativity showing up in so many different conferences and publications these days?  And what do they have to do with best practices in legal education?

The 2008 AALS Conference in New York included an Open Source presentation on play, and a Clinical Section presentation on improvisation.  The 2008 Clinical Conference in Tucson also included a session on improvisation (I organized that one and can vouch that we sent in our proposal before  learning that the same topic would be addressed in New York).

Master teacher Gerry Hess wrote about asking his students do  creative representations of the conceptual framework for personal jurisdiction years ago  (I stole his idea for a “class participation” option and built on it twice.  By also asking them to integrate the pieces of civil procedure into a creative  “big picture” project.  And by giving an in class group work assignment to draw the “stream of commerce.”)

And,  of course, interest in storytelling is high (perhaps a follow-up to the focus on narrative in the late 80’s and 90’s, including the LawStories series, and the Conferences on Storytelling.

I pondered the “why now” and “best practices?” questions when I saw the Journal of Legal Education scholarly article follow-up to the Open Source play presentation.  http://kotplow.typepad.com/clinicians_with_not_enoug/2009/03/ssrn-.html.

Is the why just aging law professors?   Always-were- creative types who now feel the confidence to be a little more “out there”?   Others starting to develop that side of their brains late in life?   Or another result of the tightening market for Ph.D’s and K-12 teachers in the 70’s that brought people into law who otherwise might have landed elsewhere?

As to “best practices” — presumably active learning necessarily means engaging both hemispheres of the brain.  If we want to “Teach the Whole Class” (to crib the title of an excellent Institute for Law Teaching video), surely we need to teach to learning styles that include the kinesthetic  — maybe manipulating play doh, as one of my married-with-children law students did for her personal jurisdiction conceptual framework?  And good legal work and good teaching require some ability to improvise in response to new situations.

I’m curious how many other such efforts around play and improvisation I’ve missed.  Am I right that these issues are “in the air”?

Filed under: Catalysts For Change, Teaching Methodology, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | 1 Comment »

If You Build It, They Will Come

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Roy Stuckey

I have long believed that alumni will financially support law school programs that are designed to prepare students for practice. I also believe that such programs will give schools an advantage over peer institutions in recruiting students.
The experience at Washington & Lee supports my theses. After making a commitment to transform its third year into an experiential education format beginning this coming Fall, W&L received a $2 million gift from an alum to help support this initiative. The school also reports that “75 second-year students opted in to become the first class to go through the program. This is well more than half of the rising 3L class and exceeds our expected enrollment by roughly thirty students.”
To top off the good news, the school announced that it has hired experiential education guru (my words) Jim Moliterno, formerly of William and Mary, as W&L’s Vincent Bradford Professor of Law.
We should all wish for the success of the program at W&L and similarly bold moves at other schools. If they can demonstrate the educational superiority of their curriculums others will follow. And it won’t hurt to show strong support from alumni and potential students.

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The Law Teacher

Posted on April 7, 2009 by michaelhunterschwartz

The latest issue of The Law Teacher is out– http://www.washburnlaw.edu/faculty/schwartz-michael-institute/15-2lawteacher(2009).pdf .

Several of the articles address topics near and dear to those of us interested in legal  education reform. In particular, Harriet Katz’s “Personal Assessment” paper offers an exciting tool for building reflection skills that can be adapted to even the most doctrine-and-theory course you teach.

Barb Glesner Fines, the Law Teacher’s First “Guest Columnist” convincingly argues that improving law teaching remains critical even (and perhaps, especially) in tough economic times.

Corrie Lynn Rosen’s “Thoughts on Being New to Academic Support” offers this gem of an image of a law school class, “My classroom would be a forum where students could try on new, difficult, or otherwise missed ideas without fear of embarrassment . . . where students would make understanding their own learning process part of addressing the larger questions . . . “

Steve Coughlan of Dalhousie Law School in Canada offers a wonderfully-crafted explanation of why he teaches.

We hope you find these and the other articles helpful and inspiring.

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On Change, Hierarchies, and Gravitas

Posted on April 2, 2009 by dmaranville

I’ve been musing on the subject of “gravitas” lately.  Why?

  • The LEARN report that Mary blogged about last month contains the sentence “LEARN has gathered law schools and educators with the experience, imagination and gravitas to effect real improvements in how the future lawyers of the country (and the world) are trained.”
  • I wasn’t able to attend Larry Marshall’s presentation at the UW’s Legal Education at the Crossroads Conference last September.  But I was told he also used the term “gravitas” in his presentation to describe why it was that the Carnegie Foundation’s effort, now called LEARN, disproportionately includes top ranked schools.

Now, I’ve talked to Larry Marshall about this subject.  He’s an amazing and thoughtful guy.  And most of us would probably agree:   if the one, or three, or five schools that produce most of the law teachers in the country radically change their curriculum and teaching methods in the next five years, we’ll see major transformation in other schools in another ten to fifteen years, if not less.  So maybe that’s a sensible strategy.

At the same time, I’m not so comfortable with the “it’s all about the gravitas” approach.  Maybe it’s because many people thought John Kerry had “gravitas” back in 2003.  And lots of folks thought Barack Obama didn’t in 2008.

Maybe because so many of the innovators in teaching methods and curriculum in the last decade have come from schools that lack “hierarchy gravitas”, but felt compelled to help their students learn better.

And maybe it’s because I fear the potential (or reality) of transformative efforts being undermined by fractures along the gravitas axis.  Of the “grav’s” wasting time reinventing wheels long since created and put on the vehicle by the un-grav’s.  Of  the ungravs getting discouraged because the gravs get all the glory for work that was initiated by the ungravs.

Tip o’ the hat to the un-grav’s for doing all the work in the trenches for all these years.  Another tip o’ the hat to the grav’s for moving the transformation checker down the board with the LEARN initiative.  And, please, all you gravs out there, keep working on inclusiveness and giving credit where it’s due.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Catalysts For Change, Who is Using the Best Practices Book? | Leave a Comment »

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